Just had TVDrive installed yesterday. I wanted it because I'm planning to get HDTV next year and also I am having problems with my TiVo randomly rebooting at ever more frequent intervals.
I also like the idea of the three tuners, 2 to record and 1 to watch, plus 90 minutes live tv rewind rather than 30. It also means the end of the "TiVo needs to change the channel at 8pm" message - which causes no end of confusion when my girlfriend comes round to watch Corrie!
With two 120GB drives in my TiVo and recording everything in Basic (guess I have bad eyesight plus I don't watch sport), 80 hours recording time seems a bit of a comedown (only 20 in HD!).
Obviously as you rent the box from Telewest there is no opportunity for hacking like there is with TiVo, so I guess you're stuck with this capacity. On the other hand, I suppose the rental business model means it's cheaper to upgrade in the future when Telewest upgrade capacity. I can't help feeling it's somewhat ironic that the cutting edge of TV tech takes you back to the old days of Radio Rentals, as it were.
My initial impression from actually using the box was, perhaps predictably, that I immediately missed a TiVo feature. First thing I wanted to do was set up a season pass for Lost. Okay, so how do I type L-O-S-T? Oh, I don't - I have to find it in the EPG and press the yellow button! Impressive for a VCR user but frustrating for us spoilt TiVo users. Recording programmes by name is probably my favourite TiVo feature, ARWL for example is nice but I can live without it. Soon after getting my TiVo I disabled suggestions as I don't even have enough time to watch programmes I've explicitly recorded anyway. So recreating season passes is going to be problematic.
I think it wouldn't be so bad if the Telewest EPG was presented in the clever way TiVo does it. The TiVo EPG fits a lot more programmes into the space available. On the other hand, once you have found the programme you want, setting the recording is a very fast process, one key press and the text background of the programme goes red instantly to reflect the recording being set.
You can set start and end padding, but it applies to all recordings. But since there are two recording tuners, I don't foresee this being a problem for me in practice.
Then I set up recordings for Space Cadets. After a trip out to see Doom at the cinema, I came home to watch it.
One additional irritation seems to be that certain programmes will always require you to enter a PIN before you can watch the recording. It seems you cannot turn parental control off completely, very annoying if you have no kids.
Oh dear, all it's recorded is a black screen.
Early this afternoon I tried two simultaneous recordings. On watching one back, the picture kept breaking up and it kept losing the sound.
So I tried the obvious tactic of rebooting the box. After reboot, it says TVDrive service not available, please phone Telewest Customer Care. I have a technician coming back next week.